The images of skeletal children that are now pouring out of Gaza are shocking but they should not be surprising. Humanitarian groups with decades of experience distributing aid in the Strip have been warning about this scenario for months, since Israel began throttling aid to a trickle.
Haunting footage of lifeless bodies with sharp bones protruding through stretched skin can be seen around the world. The pictures of starvation in Gaza are horrific, distressing and inescapable.
The main United Nations agency for Palestinians said Thursday that “people are being starved, while a few kilometers away supermarkets are loaded with food,” highlighting the stark and uncomfortable reality between life in Israel and survival in Gaza.
On a popular US-Canadian podcast this week, listeners learned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prefers Burger King to McDonalds, a ‘Whopper’ seeming to be his burger of choice. While Netanyahu did not introduce the topic, the public discussion on fast food by the man responsible for getting food into Gaza is, at its most generous, tone deaf.
The US correspondent for Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted that Netanyahu “spent valuable time” on the burger chat “rather than answering legitimate questions about the Gaza humanitarian crisis or the delays in sealing a hostage deal and cease-fire.”
World leaders see the same pictures of starvation as everyone else and yet seem powerless to stop them, unable to pressure Israel into allowing more aid in or returning to the tried and tested UN-led distribution methods.
It is true that condemnation is becoming more collective and targeted. More than two dozen European foreign ministers jointly criticized Israel’s “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians,” a statement Israel’s foreign ministry rejected as “disconnected from reality.”
More than 100 international humanitarian organizations warned Israeli restrictions on aid are endangering the lives of doctors and aid workers.
But these are words and words can be ignored.
Writing about the EU response, former Israeli hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin said it was “still just a piece of paper. Into the trash bin of history is the way that the State of Israel treats it.”
So, what could reverse what the United Nations chief is calling the “horror show” in Gaza?
In a word, Trump.
The US president was publicly scathing of Netanyahu when Israel struck Iran hard in the final hours before a ceasefire. After a phone call, Israel pulled back.
When Israel struck the only Catholic Church in Gaza, Trump did not have a “positive reaction” according to the White House and called Netanyahu. The Israeli leader said he deeply regretted it, calling the strike a mistake.
An irate phone call from the leader of the free world does appear to be the quickest way to provoke a change of heart from a leader seemingly unmoved by increasing international criticism.
The White House spokesperson has said Trump “wants the killing to end” but visible anger, frustration, condemnation from the US president over the humanitarian crisis unfolding has been minimal, at least publicly.
The US focus has been on securing a ceasefire and hostage deal, still elusive despite words of hope and optimism from the Trump administration in recent weeks.
Arab leaders have condemned Israel, called for an immediate ceasefire and devised a plan to rebuild post-war Gaza to counter Trump’s plan to displace the entire population from the Strip. The Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council called Israel’s policies this week the “crime of the century.”
Israel has long rejected accusations of a humanitarian blockade, insisting its policies are designed to prevent Hamas from stealing supplies, claims aid agencies have denied.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, visiting Gaza Wednesday, says Israel is following international law and it is Hamas who is trying to sabotage the aid process.
COGAT, the agency in charge of aid entering Gaza, says the the military is “working to allow and facilitate the transfer of aid, including food.”
Israel has also pushed back on calls to allow more aid in, saying there are truckloads waiting at the border to be collected by aid agencies. The UN and others on the ground have countered that Israel does not always give permission to move aid or approves routes deemed too dangerous.
Comments from the far right of Netanyahu’s coalition calling for starving Gaza until the hostages are released provoke widespread revulsion outside Israel, but less within it.
Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, 2023 killed around 1,200 Israelis, saw another roughly 250 kidnapped as hostages, and hardened Israeli views against their Palestinian neighbors. But one recent poll shows 71% of Israelis asked now want the war to end.
While Netanyahu is losing his mandate to keep fighting, there are no signs that his coalition plans to ease restrictions on aid to Gaza, where nearly 60,000 people have been killed since the start of the war. And the media in Israel focuses more on concern for the remaining hostages and the soldiers fighting in Gaza, than it does on the plight of besieged Palestinians. For them, hope now rests on a ceasefire, a deal that will allow a flood of supplies into the ruined territory.
But when will that be agreed, how soon will the borders open to life-saving aid and how many will die in the meantime?
The malnutrition toll has been spiking in recent days with the director of al Shifa Hospital warning this week “we are heading towards terrifying death tolls.”
One UN worker on the ground added, “People in Gaza are neither dead (nor) alive, they are walking corpses”.
